Roleless buffs and the hate they bring

Every MMO suffers from more DPS than other roles. Look at WoW, for instance since it's still the big shot of MMOs. 5 player dungeons, 1 Healer, 1 Tank, and 3 DPS. They had to incentivize players running as healers and tanks due to not enough players running in those roles. Even with incentives, there are by design 3:1 ratios for DPS to Healer and DPS to Tank.

How did players do it before the buff? Those early alerts were introduced before the buff, and all those toys too I might add...

If its too hard now, what does that say? Some adjustments could be made if needed, but I think if it was beatable then, its certainly beatable now.

You say that but don't acknowledge that duos basically have buffs too. You get more power back in duos and anyone can CC. You can run as DPS/Support hybrid in duos. 4 and 8mans try to force a separation, with support powers only working for the support players. The buffs act as a buffer for players not used to it.

We had a larger and more active population then and not spread out over so many tiers.

However that incentivization has helped the game tremendously. Same thing for FFXIV which has the healthy 22, 21, 57 breakdown of healer, tank, and dps population.

DCUO on the other hand does not incentivize support, and promotes DPS which causes an unhealthy population.

So roleless buffs are necessary for the game to survive.

I addressed this in another post of yours I quoted, but i'd like to add something else.

I honestly believe that an overwhelming majority of people on the forums, and certainly in this thread, are above average to very good players. The rest...are average and below. Even with all the tools you mentioned above, there are people who struggle now, with easy content AND roleless buffs. Don't believe it??? Just queue up some time...you'll see all sorts of odd play out there...and that's with a plethora of tools. We've even seen threads were people stated that they were in alerts running at the 30 minute mark or longer.

I've run with people who refuse to pop colas because it is their fervent belief that Healers and Trolls are supposed to ALWAYS keep them topped off. Those same people foolishly waste their supply drops and orbitals on adds on the way to the boss fight, and when they need them most, they're on cooldown. With the expense and rapid fire succession of Gear and Mod plans with feats attached, you have people who are not properly modded (some don't even have betas for affinities). Others without white mods, or goofy choices (Healing Hand mod, but never use a personal shield that can benefit from it). Armories don't mean jack if people are a) not playing a support role at all (I have two toons currently like that for my own reasons), and b) If they don't have a survival DPS loadout. And be completely honest with me...how many DPS do you know that carry a group shield instead of an offensive power in their loadout (and no, you can't count yourself if you do it)??? Outside of my one leaguemate who is forward thinking, i've yet to run into a DPS that had a group shield in their loadout. The closest i've seen to a DPS carrying something beneficial to the whole group are Nature DPSes in Gorilla form. And that's not every day.

The point i'm making is that yes, we have a ton of tools, but you can't always count that your random teammates will have taken proper advantage of all of them...so the ONLY one we can rely on consistently is the roleless buff.

Right now, I would LOVE for the Devs to do an experiment like they did with the kick option. Have one or two whole weeks without the roleless buffs and see how many actually get to complete content. See, if that happens, it won't affect me...i'll just completely stop blind queuing during that period and just strictly run with my league and friends. Others won't be as lucky...and i'll bet we'll get an influx of new posters around these parts wondering what the hell just happened.

So by T8, we haven't acclimated to having less power in group content?

All those toys, and we still need imaginary friends to help us along.

I'm not saying there couldn't be better ways to handle the population issue. If it had been me, I would have required at least 1-2 non-damage role(s) per alert and filled in the missing role(s) with the role-less buff.

Have you noticed how easy Duos are??? You want alerts to be that easy too (I mean easier than they already are)??? Also, Alerts are generally speaking, supposed to prepare you (mechanics and gear-wise) for the raids.

I get it. I see players leave some alerts after one wipe instead of adding a shield or using their armory.

I think, players would adjust without the buff, they would do as you have stated, form their own groups, find alternates that work, and you would see more players able to play support roles.

I'd like them harder, honestly, but that just me.


Imaginary toughness, cannot possibly prepare you for raids, in fact you could die a lot expecting that same effect in a raid...

In my book, that equates to the same thing. Four good or above average DPS know to run to whomever is getting most aggro and put their supply drops there. They also know, after the first wipe, to sacrifice a move or two for either a personal shield (for survival or pick-ups), a group shield or a big group heal (if they're a healer power).

As it stands right now if you run end game content and you try to run alerts as anything other than DPS role you will get called every name in the book or the DPS will just stop and do nothing while the tanks, healer and or controllers try to finish the instances so they do not waste a kick on these knuckleheads. As an adult I cannot believe other adults let this kind of behavior be accepted as the norm.

YES, I'M LOOKING AT YOU DCUO DEVS.

It's time to step up, be adults and stop letting these kids act like jerkoffs. As an adult, a coach, a parent and a teacher this is totally unacceptable behavior and the only way to stop it is by removing the crutch that these cancerous DPS players use called roleless buffs.

Thing is, it's next to impossible to correct that problem here...not after years of having a leveling system that primarily pushes the DPS role and just barely makes mention that you have another option.

Make a tutorial for roles early on, improve support roles, make getting gear for a secondary role a little less painful in the early stages...THEN we can talk about removing the roleless buff. Removing it now without fixing the glaring problems will only cause bigger problems and solve absolutely nothing.

Pretty sure that was also prior to stat revamp. No way to try it other than gimping the team by asking someone to stay behind but I'm sure a group of 4 DPS fresh 30s would fail those early alert with out the buffs. But these ppl are not the ppl the OP is refering to. And I'm certain removing the buffs would not change those ppl.

I'm mental. I carry all kinds of goodies in my invisibility loadout... group shield included.

Thank you for pointing out something else I forgot. I've leveled new toons, I know what i'm doing. It's a lot easier to get up in cr than it is to get all of those tools. Just unlocking Supply Drop and Tactical mods takes a while. New players barely know what to do once they've hit level 30, let alone sacrificing buying gear in order to get Lair stuff.

Or maybe there aren't as many toxic players as people like to make out in here.

With my league no problem with trolls tanks or heals we are solid love that soooooo many just want to dps and can't do something lol

With this community I doubt it. People will flock to the forums and complain. Some people will outright quit saying the bug of them removing the buffs made it where they cannot get through/play content.

If anything I wouldnt be surprised if devs buffed roleless buffs in the future to accomodate the growing dps population

Just barely is how. Why do you think it was introduced in the first place??? It's not like the Devs said "oh look, everything is fine, why not introduce this unnecessary crutch for the players". There were way more DPS players than there were Support roles...and that was heavily impacting queue times.

Why do you think some DPSes game the system by queuing up as a support role even though they clearly have no intention of running support??? Because there are more DPS than support. That was true back then when they introduced roleless buffs...and it's even more necessary now.

This game was and even more now is DPS heavy. Try LFG to form a raid or alert group. Watch how quickly you can fill up your DPS slots...and see how long it takes to get a support role. Depending on the day of the week or hour of the day, you might be short a tank or healer. Trolls are in short supply because the revamp kind of left them in a weird place.